The following article, provided by The Mustek Group, gives more information about Office 365, and explains the benefits it brings to users.

What Is Office 365?

Office 365 for Small, Midsize and Enterprise Business is a subscription based online service offered by Microsoft.

Office 365 brings together familiar Office desktop applications with business class email, shared calendars, instant messaging, video conferencing and file sharing, in a cloud based service with no requirement to invest in infrastructure.

What Enterprise Grade Services are offered on the business plans on Office 365?

Business Class Email – Office 365 gives you access to a 50GB mailbox with the ability to share calendars and contacts from a PC, Mac, phone or browser.

Professional Instant Message, PC to PC Voice, Video and Conferencing – Save time and improve productivity with a professional communications tool. You’ll be able to communicate with colleagues, suppliers and customers in real time, create conference calls and online meetings. Enhance your online presentations with screen sharing and virtual whiteboards.

How is Office 365 licensed?

Office 365 is licensed on a per user model. This means that you will need a license for each user in your organisation that is using Office 365. The Office Desktop Apps that is included in Office 365 for offline use give each user the right to install Office on up to 5 different devices.

You will be licensed to use Office 365 for as long as you have an active subscription to the service. When you purchase Office 365 through a reseller, you will sign up for a one year subscription to Office 365, which means that you will have access to use Office 365 for the full year. Another great benefit of Office 365 is that you have access to the latest version of Office as long as you have an active subscription.

Why Should I Get Office 365 for My Business?

Some Misconceptions on Office 365

1.You need to be connected to the Internet to access Office / I need to be connected to the Internet to access my documents

False – Your PC simply needs to be online once per month for the desktop copy of Microsoft to speak to the Server to check that the user still has an active O365 subscription. Once verified, you continue to use Office Professional Plus as you normally would… it lives on your PC.

The user will install a SkyDrive Pro folder on their PC. This allows you to save files to the folder. The folder sits on your hard drive, but every time you have an Internet connection, your files will automatically sync to the cloud. This is an easy backup solution for your important document and no active back up is needed. If your PC’s hard drive crashes, you can simply download the SkyDrive folder from the cloud and be up and running in no time. It is important to know that this will not back up settings on your PC, but is meant entirely to be a backup solution for your important files.

2.You need to download a copy of Office365 for each time you need to install Office

False – Check out http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36778 to download the Office Deployment Tool. Using this tool, the company simply downloads the files once, and can install Office 365 over the server / network.

3.My data is sitting in the public cloud – therefore, it cannot be secure

Microsoft has extremely stringent security policies. For starters, unlike other service providers, Microsoft doesn’t scan through your data for any reason, and that includes scanning emails for potential advertising content opportunities

If you decide that you want to move away from Office 365, you have up to 90 days from the end of your subscription to remove all your data from the cloud. Many businesses who have had the unfortunate experience of having their business broken into will attest to the fact that no matter how much back up is done on site, there is always a risk of physical data theft. By using an Office 365 solution, you know that your precious data is always secure. Microsoft’s data centres are backed up in diverse geographic locations to ensure that should something go wrong with one of the data centres, you as the customer will not be affected. This is done in accordance with

“POPI” Protection of Personal Information legislation, which dictates that South Africans can only move their data off South African shores if the datacentre used complies with legislations that are equal to or better than that of South Africa, which Microsoft datacentres comply with.

4.Office 365 is a subscription – why should I buy into a subscription instead of an Office package that I own?

Office 365 is a subscription service that offers flexible payment methods, depending on the product purchased. Flexibility in payments is extremely important, especially for a small business. This means that your cash flow is not tied up, giving you the freedom to spend more on other business-generating activities. The business grade email, document storage and communication technology all run on Microsoft’s servers and is included in the service – so no need to acquire or deploy additional servers!